In recent years the economic news for South Australia has been bleak. This time tomorrow, South Australians will head to the ballot box and decide who should lead the state for the next four years, and change look likely. The Liberals need to pick up six seats to form a majority government and end Labor's 12 year rule.

Transcript

CHRIS UHLMANN: In recent years the economic news for South Australia has been bleak.

During the mining boom the state pinned its hopes on a $28 billion expansion of Olympic Dam, but falling commodity prices saw the project shelved.

Then came the worst kind of Christmas present: in December the iconic carmaker Holden announced it would stop making cars in Australia by 2017, hammering an already job-starved economy in the south.

This time tomorrow, South Australians will head to the ballot box to decide who should lead the State for the next four years, and change looks likely. The Liberals need to pick up six seats to form a majority government and end Labor's 12 year rule.

The Opposition Leader is Steven Marshall. Good morning.

STEVEN MARSHALL: Good morning, Chris.

CHRIS UHLMAN: Well you've made much of the fact that you've got a business background, but that's nothing like running a state, is it?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Look, there's no doubt it is different, but my entire life I've been out there employing South Australians. The biggest problem we've got in this state at the moment is increasing unemployment. We've got the highest unemployment rate on mainland Australia. We've lost in excess of 20,000 jobs over the last eight months under Jay Weatherill and Labor and he's got no plan to get our economy back on track.

CHRIS UHLMAN: And one of the things you have to do is to cut the size of government which, in South Australia, is larger than most of the rest of the states in Australia. You're saying 5,000 jobs, but it needs much greater surgery than that, doesn't it?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well no, we believe that by cutting up to 5,170 jobs it will bring the budget back to surplus in two years. That's what we've got to do, and we can do that at the same time that we're actually pushing through tax reform - much needed tax reform in South Australia, which is really holding South Australian business back.

CHRIS UHLMAN: Well you're talking about a payroll tax cut and you're talking about a land tax cut. They are actually your biggest own source revenue items really. Combined they're about half of the money that the state actually makes for itself. Aren't you concerned that you're cutting revenue at a time when the state desperately needs it?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well we're not cutting it to actually reduce the overall revenue in the state; we're cutting it to actually grow our economy and increase revenue into our state.

Look, at the end of the day, South Australia has the highest business taxes in the nation; we've had that position for five years in a row; it's a massive handbrake on our economy. That's what's slowing down our economy and we're going to be easing that handbrake; we're going to be taking the axe to payroll tax, which is a straight out tax on employment, and land tax which is...

CHRIS UHLMAN: And if you cut your own source revenue, don't you run the risk that you might have the Grants Commission cut your Commonwealth payments if you cut your own source revenue?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well, what we want to do is grow the overall size of our economy. We don't want to tax our way to some sort of profitability. It doesn't work. I mean you cannot have the highest taxes and you can't have increasing red tape and a business sector which is growing and investing.

So we don't have growth in our economy. The national statistics came out last week. Our economy in South Australia contracted again in the December quarter. We're losing jobs; investment is flowing across our borders into jurisdictions where they can get better returns with lower land tax.

And quite frankly, the settings that Jay Weatherill and Labor have presided over for 12 years have, you know, basically dealt us the hand that we've got and delivered us to the position that we're in now. We've the largest deficit in the state's history. This year we're going to be having an even larger deficit and there's just no plan to return us to surplus.

CHRIS UHLMAN: And to return to surplus will require quite a drastic surgery on that budget and that will require a lot more pain than you're talking about at the moment.

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well no, we've had our costs independently verified, independently verified line by line. And we believe that, unequivocally, we can return the budget to surplus in 2015/16.

CHRIS UHLMAN: Now much is also being made of the relationship that you'll have with the Federal Government in Canberra. There's no money in its wallet though, is there, either for South Australia - no more than would usually come?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well we just had a great announcement yesterday by the Prime Minister who flew in to South Australia. He made some defence announcements. We've also got some great infrastructure commitments from the Federal Government, so we will be working with Canberra to try to grow our economy.

Jay Weatherill just wants to fight with Canberra. In fact, that's the major point of his entire election strategy: we will fight with Canberra. I mean, give me a break, I mean Canberra are the ones that have got the defence contracts.

You know, Tony Abbott says that he wants to be remembered as the infrastructure prime minister of Australia. Well we want him to be remembered in South Australia as the infrastructure prime minister and have him invest in our...

CHRIS UHLMAN: Finally, briefly though, it is a very difficult task to turn South Australia around. Are you being as honest with South Australians as you possibly can be?

STEVEN MARSHALL: Well we are the only party that put our costings, our plan out to independent verification. The Premier didn't do that. He dreamt up his own costings document himself.

He is presiding over, you know, a regime which has no credibility economically whatsoever and he's now saying, well trust us for another four years; trust us for 16 years. Well we know what we've had for 12 years. I don't think there's going to be a change going forward.